After demolishing the White House's East Wing, President Donald Trump is now eying four federal buildings for the same treatment and is circumventing a key government agency with his plans, according to a historic preservationist raising the alarm.
Mydelle "Mina" Wright, a former senior official at the General Services Administration, wrote in a sworn court declaration this week that the White House is "acting on its own and not through the GSA," which oversees government property, to solicit bids "to analyze and recommend for demolition four historic federal buildings in DC." The administration, though, asserted in a court filing that the government was contemplating transferring ownership of the buildings, not destroying them. read more
A grand jury declined for a second time to re-indict New York Attorney General Letitia James on Thursday, refusing to resurrect a mortgage fraud prosecution encouraged by President Donald Trump, according to a person familiar with the matter.
It's another major blow to the Justice Department after the dismissal of earlier charges against James and another longtime Trump foe, former FBI Director James Comey, in a stunning rebuke of the Trump administration's efforts to prosecute the president's political opponents.
A judge threw out the original indictments against James and Comey in November, ruling that the prosecutor who presented to the grand jury, Lindsey Halligan, was illegally appointed U.S. attorney for the Eastern District of Virginia.
For months, the Trump administration has been accusing its political enemies of mortgage fraud for claiming more than one primary residence.
But years earlier, Trump did the very thing he's accusing his enemies of, records show.
In 1993, Trump signed a mortgage for a "Bermuda style" home in Palm Beach, Florida, pledging that it would be his principal residence. Just seven weeks later, he got another mortgage for a seven-bedroom, marble-floored neighboring property, attesting that it too would be his principal residence. In reality, Trump, then a New Yorker, does not appear to have ever lived in either home, let alone used them as a principal residence.
Instead, the two houses, which are next to his historic Mar-a-Lago estate, were used as investment properties and rented out, according to contemporaneous news accounts and an interview with his longtime real estate agent " exactly the sort of scenario his administration has pointed to as evidence of fraud.
Venezuela's president asked to keep $200m of his private wealth, amnesty for his officials and safe harbour in a friendly country as part of a deal with Donald Trump to step down and flee, sources said. read more
President Donald Trump is eager to be recognized as a peacemaker. His administration obliged Wednesday by renaming the building that houses the U.S. Institute of Peace in downtown D.C. read more
Like no one ever thought that this sort of thing might happen...
OCU